The Joy

Have you ever woke up one morning (or several) just grumpier than all get out?  Or even wake up feeling numb?  What happens during the night that changes one's mood?  Why does one wake up 'happy & joyful' one day and 'mad at the world' another?  I do not have the answer to that.  I only know it happens.  To me.  Too often.  Although I have learned how to recognize it immediately, I just pray to God.  I tell him I'm struggling already today and ask him to help me not be this rotten mooded human being.  Or that I could really use some joyful emotion today.  I used to not recognize it and just be horrible for the whole day, making everyone miserable with me.  I'd chalk it up to hormones.  But then it'd happen at a 'different' time of the month and not 'the' time of the month.   I couldn't figure out why.  So I quit trying.  I started dealing with how to not be that way.  It's amazing what I realized.  It's a choice.  Sometimes we choose to stay grumpy because it feels good!  I have no idea why, but it does.  Sometimes we feel like everyone else deserves our unhappiness.  I mean if you can't be happy, why should anyone else?  Or sometimes it's the other joyful happy one that makes us even grumpier.  The bottom line is, we do choose our mood.  We might wake up gritchy, but we do not have to stay that way!!  We do not have to let the enemy steal our joy!  I've been rather 'numb' lately.  I'm realizing that it's also a choice to not feel anything.  You have to make an effort everyday to feel.  It just depends on what you pursue.  I've been so busy working and running around.  I have not been pursuing my faith.  I've been pursuing how I can't handle everything that I'm doing.  I've been fixated again.  It's another word for captivated.  I've been captivated in a negative way of thinking.  I've been my own God again and you'd think I'd know by now that it just doesn't work that way.  If one could follow every negative thought with a positive one, in particular a thankful thought, you would absolutely find your self in a better mood. 

Psalm 126:3 NIV  "The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy"

Psalm 119:147  NIV  "I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word."

Psalm 51:12  NIV  "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me."